


Bonfires burning bright, pumpkin faces in the night,   I remember Halloween

by BlissBasket



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A little bit of fluff, Clint loves his Halloween movies, Established Relationship, Halloween, M/M, Phil loves Clint, They both love Halloween treats, and so much feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:55:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlissBasket/pseuds/BlissBasket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint wanted a quiet night with Phil, watching scary movies and eating pumpkin flavored cookies. But even on the night of Halloween, they can't be left alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bonfires burning bright, pumpkin faces in the night,   I remember Halloween

**Author's Note:**

> After reading and writing so much angst, I wanted a bit of fluff in my life. I'm not sure it's really fluffy but at least I gave Clint his movie night because he really needs it.
> 
> Ah, and I think this fic suffers from a curse (let me have my Halloween fantasy), because every time my lovely beta reader sent her edits to me, the message disappeared. So all the mistakes are mine.

 

Clint had always considered Halloween like a nice little celebration for kids, offering an excuse to everyone to eat sweets and play let's be afraid for one night.

Clint liked candy and never missed an occasion to celebrate all these things he never really knew as a kid. So, of course, Halloween was his favourite holiday celebration. With Christmas.

But Christmas, it was because of Phil, of this feeling of warmth and joy, of colourful memories and the smell of home-cooked meals shared with laughters and acceptance, and because words like home, family and love had sense now. Or again. Clint wasn't really sure. But he was sure he had never felt so much happiness before.

 

Halloween had not the same meaning. Halloween was not a family thing for Clint, he had no memories of his mother baking him cinnamon treats or pumpkin pies, no one to help him and his brother to make a costume, and the neighbourhood they lived in wasn't the safest place for children who wished to play tricks and treats.

But Clint had always enjoyed the skeleton decorations, the carved pumpkins, the scary movies marathon and all the different pumpkin flavoured cakes. Because there was something fun with these fake scary things when your job confronted you with big, real threats every other day of the week.  

 

This was before Clint learned that the monsters of Halloween could get real too.

 

Clint should have expected it though. After the battle of New York, when the world learned that other planets had life, that people looking like humans and creatures who looked like the product of children nightmares existed, there has been a significant increase of monsters threats. Not a lot were from alien origins, it was more often the product of slightly bored, sometimes a bit crazy and sometimes in need of an adrenalin rush scientists, who watched too many horror movies, and swallowed too many science-fiction novels and comics.

So far the Avengers had been dispatched between the different sites and called on a zombie attack on Manhattan, some freaky sandworms in the Nevada, conceived by a guy who must considered Dune like his bible, trite creatures from the Alien movie (the original one from 1979, Sitwell told him. It was important to not mix them with the sequels. Not like Clint really cared about which movie the guy took his inspiration from, but some things were sacred for Sitwell, so Clint nodded at the voice in his earpiece and threw an arrow directly between the monster's eyes, the most likely place to blow its brain.) The last ones were repulsive monsters whose heads had been replaced by a huge mouth with three ranks of sharped teeth. These ones had really annoyed Clint when one of them bite him viciously in the right arm, forcing him to have stitches and slowed down range training for a few days.

 

 

He thought he could be left alone for the night of Halloween, that at least the bad guys had the decency to not make themselves look silly on this particular night with one of their stupid monsters inventions. But no, of course there were some idiots who thought it could be a brilliant idea to spoil children fun and unleash genetically modified creatures, the day Clint and Phil had plans involving movies and a stop in a bakery for pumpkin rolls or iced pumpkin cookies.

That was their own little tradition, they would make a stop in one of Phil's favourites bakeries after a movie, since Phil refused categorically to sneak food into the cinema. Apparently it was “the behavior expected from giggling teenagers, Barton, not of a grown man”. Clint had replied that sneaking forbidden things into places made up for half the fun of doing it. After that, Phil always bought him caramelized popcorn. Clint suspected it was mostly a way to tell him to shut up but he wasn't about to complain when he could let his hand lingered on Phil's tight under the pretext to search for the popcorn they shared between their seats.

 

Tonight, they had bought tickets for a horror-scifi marathon in a theater near their flat. Natasha teased him all the time for his love towards old monsters' movies but the truth was, Clint was always excited to watch countless of times movies he has only heard of but never has the chance to see as a child, like _Godzilla_ or _Them_ . He didn't want to share his reasons though, people didn't need to pity him and compare his childhood to a Dickens novel set in modern New-York.

Besides Natasha and Phil knew, they just didn't speak about it.

Yet Clint was bummed about missing _Q: the winged serpent_ , the story of an Aztec Lizard monster attacking New-York, he have never seen this one before. It would probably have been hilarious but as usual, missions got in the way.

 

But even upset about their evening canceled, Clint couldn't stop smiling when he thought this banal and innocent word, _flat_.

Well, technically it was Phil's flat, since Clint had stopped renting his crappy studio, nothing more than a gloomy hole and been convinced by Phil to come live with him.

He shared a home with a man who loved him. And Clint was happy. In love and happy. He never imagined it would happen to him but it did and he wasn't letting some laboratory freaks spoil his happiness.

 

So he went kicking some monsters asses while Agent Coulson was called into an endless meeting about a new solution to stop imaginative creations from pouring into the streets.

What were they expecting? That the man was going to find a solution in one night, with all the weariness and stress he had accumulated since he went back to work, after what happened with Loki?

Granted he didn't realize how heroic he could be, how he was Clint's personnal hero but even Phil Coulson had his limits.

Clint still had a hard time thinking about what had almost happened, what he had believed had happened at the time, so he didn't think about it and tried to focus on the present, their present.

And right now, all he wanted was to take off his heavy boots and hoping for Phil to come back home not too late, to have the little luxury of spending the rest of the evening together and not just pass out from exhaustion into each other's arms.

 

The Avengers had quickly taken control of the situation and Tony had insisted they all shared a pizza, something about reinforcing the team's bonds, especially since they all were supposed to live at the Avengers Tower. Clint smirked when he remembered the conversation with Tony, when Phil had insisted with keeping his flat. Even if they shared a room (most like an upgraded and luxurious loft) in the Avengers Tower, they preferred to spend most of their free time together in this quiet bubble they had created inside New-York never endless hectic mood. And frankly, Clint couldn't wait to get home and enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of his apartment without Tony's constant chatter.

 

When Clint started to dig into his pockets to find his keys, he had to stop a moment at the smell of cinammon coming through the door. He grinned, opening silently the door, excited at the idea to surprise Phil and confused at the smell. They rarely cooked between all their assignements and the few moments they managed to save for themselves, they didn't have a lot of time for cooking other than microwaved frozen food.

Clint's grin only grew wider because something home-cooked generally meant a special occasion and, in the lives of Agent Phil Coulson and Specialist Clint Barton, a special occasion was a moment where they had time for themselves.

 

Right on cue, Phil turned against the counter and smiled back at Clint.

“I miraculously got away from this meeting two hours ago and, if no mythological gods decide to invade Earth or genetically modified creatures to destroy New-York, we should have a bit of time in the morning too.”

“You are letting Sitwell and Hill took some of your responsibilities. That's not very professionnal, sir.” Clint drawled the last word out cheekily, lazily drifting in the kitchen and taking a look at the steaming trail that Phil just took out of the oven. He hadn't been wrong about the cinammon, now that he was closer he could also smell pumpkin, and vanilla waiting in a bowl for the glazing.

“They have learned to do without me when I wasn't...around.”

Clint's grin disappeared, all thoughts of iced pumpkins cookies forgotten. He didn't want to think about that, it was too soon, he had still a hard time dealing with the idea of losing Phil.

He just shook his head, moving his thoughts aside and took Phil in his arms, running his hands against Phil's forearms and shoulders then his back, before stroking his hair, nuzzling his nose against his neck, breathing into the warm scent of cinammon and sugar and underneath, the familiar and comforting scent which was purely Phil's.

“Thanks for the cookies.” _Thanks for being there._ He didn't say it out loud but he knew that Phil could read through his words, it was one of the purely magic aspects of their relationship, they somehow seemed to understand each other beyond spoken words.

Phil hugged him tighter, leaning in the embrace and buried his face in Clint's hair, whispering so quietly that Clint wouldn't have been sure he has spoken if he had not feel his lips move along his temple.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Phil.” _And I'm so grateful_ _for you to have make_ _your_ _way into my life._

“Come on now, I promised you a movie.”

Clint's grin reappeared when Phil took his hand, pulling him along toward the living room. Clint had just time to grab a handful of cookies, half-laughing, half-curious about Phil's movie choice before Phil threw him on the couch, raising proudly a DVD of _Q: the winged serpent_.

Once the movie was about to start, Clint pulled his lover closer against him, moving his head from Phil's shoulder to his thigh, where Clint leaned, eyes half-closed, comfortably resting in his lover's lap, enjoying the feel of Phil's fingers playing with his hair.

Yes, he was sure he had never been so much happy in his life. He had finally found his family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
  



End file.
